The Polish Christmas Eve Feast that Helped Me Find HomeDecember 21st, 2018

By Gretchen Kalwinski

y Indiana hometown isn’t pretty. Peppered with smokestacks and smelling of refined corn,

it’s grey, hard, industrial. But one day each year, I find beauty there.

Wigilia, which translates to “vigil” in English, is the epic Polish Christmas Eve feast. A solemn,

sentimental celebration, it lasts hours and includes twelve meatless courses, featuring mushroom

soup, carp, herring, rye bread, pierogi, sauerkraut, gołąbki (cabbage rolls), honey vodka, and desserts

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like kołaczki. It’s a tradition my refugee grandparents brought with them when they immigrated in

the 1950s to a neighborhood teeming with Polish churches, delis, and bakeries. Other than their

children, my grandparents had no U.S. family, so it connected them to home.

My family isn’t exactly artsy. Some work at mills or the electric company. My mother is a paralegal

and my father is a social worker. But on Wigilia, everyone lets a little poetry and magic in. Growing

up, I remember my mill-worker grandfather singing folk songs, roughneck uncles donning fresh

sweaters and haircuts, my mother eating as much dessert as she wanted, my father delivering

eloquent blessings, my grandmother smiling (rare), my quiet brother telling jokes, and my sister

coaxing everyone out of their shells.

Each year, we spend days preparing. On the morning of Christmas Eve we visit shops for fresh fish

and bread. Then we decorate the tree and adorn folding tables with linens, china and poinsettias.

Once stars are visible in the sky, we put on holiday reds and sparkly tops. My grandmother’s crystal

catches the candlelight.

It wasn’t until I returned home to Chicago that it hit me: the extent ofeverything my ancestors had left behind.

Before the supper begins, we pass oplatek—flat, flavorless wafers embossed with the nativity scene.

Starting with the host, one at a time each person breaks off a piece of the wafer, then kisses the

person next to them and wishes them good fortune. Though the feast is family-centric, we often

gather with friends before and after to break oplatek and do vodka toasts; (“na zdrowie!” means “to

your health”). Hosts set out an extra chair and plate for unexpected visitors, both to represent Mary

and Joseph and to symbolize absent loved ones.

When I was growing up, one neighborhood family always held a late-night afterparty, and we’d play

with the kids of my dad’s boyhood friends, whom we call kuyzn (cousin) to this day.

My grandparents’ memories were complicated. Babcia worked in a forced-labor camp and met Dzia-

Dzia at a displaced-persons camp. When I called their engagement “romantic,” Babcia said that

everyone had to form new families since so many of theirs had been killed. She told me the women

used the same white dress for the many weddings.

We continued Wigilia after my grandparents died in the early aughts. Sometimes we invited friends

to join, but since neither my siblings nor I have kids, our dinners shrank, becoming intimate but

lonely. We’d spend them reminiscing about my grandparents, whose reality was sometimes grim,

burdened by the traumas of the past. My mother’s Slovak family had already lost most of their

customs. Without my grandparents’ insistence on traditions, and another generation to carry them

out, what would our legacy be? I’d long forgotten the Polish I learned at language classes. Without

Wigilia, who was I?

In 2007, my sister reconnected with our Polish family, traveling to Poland and visiting their village.

She returned with my father in 2009, giving him the chance to meet his cousins, aunts, and uncles for

the first time. For my part, I began mining photo albums and found a 1930s photo of a mystery

woman linking arms with someone in a bear costume. Captivated, I made it my Facebook profile

photo, and within days, a Polish man with my grandmother’s maiden last name messaged me. “In

your picture I saw my father’s mother. [She] was Wladyslaw and her daughter [was], Janka? If so,

you’re family.” My grandmother was Janina, and we confirmed that he was my father’s first cousin.

Then, in July 2017, my parents, brother, sister, and I traveled to Eastern Europe and began

connecting names from my grandmother’s stories to faces. As we spent time in their homes, we saw

old photos of our graduations and holidays. We realized that, since my grandparents had sent our

photos for decades, our relatives knew exactly who we were. Not only that, our round, upturned

noses and wavy, dark-blond hair were an exact match to theirs.

During the trip, we visited the church where our family has worshiped for six hundred years and

reveled at a cousin’s wedding. Over tea with his aunt, my dad (“Tata”), turned to me and said, “They

know us.” In this town a continent away, we were known. When we saw our name on hundreds of

headstones at a graveyard, I started tagging Instagram posts with #ancestralhomelandpilgrimage.

Our relatives put out a new spread of food every few hours. A typical lunch was cutlets, carrot salad,

sauerkraut, beets, pierogi, cordial, and tort cakes. But the breakfasts were magnificent: compote,

smoked fish, cheese, rye bread, yogurt, coffee, fresh mint tea and sausage. These spreads hearkened

Wigilia, and, during a broken conversation, we found their Christmas Eve traditions almost identical

to ours—except that, at their table’s extra place setting, we had been among the symbolic ghosts.

Unlike us, they had a deep sense of belonging, and we, the American family, were the only missing

piece in their story.

A week later, when we met my grandmother’s family, we found my uncle’s smirk identical to

Babcia’s, and that, like her, he was a vivid storyteller. We compared Wigilias, and again found their

traditions remarkably similar to our own.

We ended the trip in a Slovakian village in the Tatra Mountains, with the goal of locating my

mother’s great-grandmother’s grave. When we found it—a worn cross—my stoic mother wept.

It wasn’t until I returned home to Chicago that it hit me: the extent of everything my ancestors had

left behind. I began to feel myself a part of something ephemeral but important—something to do

with land and storytelling.

I’ll never lose Wigilia because it’s a not just a tradition; it’s a way ofbeing.

The Wigilia that followed the trip was different. When we passed the oplatki,

we remembered our ancestors, but the table didn’t seem small. We’d spent the weeks before the

holiday exchanging cards with our Polish family. We’d liked each other’s Instagram posts and used

mushrooms foraged by Uncle Marek in our consommé. Over dessert, we imagined my grandparents

as refugees, sailing the Queen Elizabeth, steeled for adventure.

That day, I felt that same refugee hope, connected across continents and decades. I’m grateful for

forging a real connection to my Polish family. But what affected me most deeply was the recognition

that my grandparents’ sheer will to survive was so strong that nothing could stop it—not war, prison,

oceans or illness. They, like all immigrants, conjured a life from thin air. Setting an extra place at

Wigilia was a beautiful gesture, but in truth, the alchemy of creating kin where none existed was

something they practiced, all year long, for most of their lives. They learned to find family in their

neighborhoods, churches, delis, bakeries, and pharmacies. And, whether my siblings and I produce

ancestors or not, that’s something we’ve taken into the world: That when you have nothing, you can

still create something; you can still find your people.

I’ll never lose Wigilia because it’s a not just a tradition; it’s a way of being. This year, the extra

chairs on Christmas Eve will symbolize not just those who’ve died or aren’t present, but the family

we have yet to meet—the ones who’ve been waiting to know us all along.

There’s always more vodka and oplatki to go around. Na zdrowie. ■

Gretchen Kalwinski is a writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Reader, The Dodo,

and Orbitz. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Northwestern and previously worked as an

editor at Time Out Chicago and elsewhere. Her essay “Illiana” was included in Rust Belt Chicago:

An Anthology.

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